Tuesday, October 18, 2005

What scares me to death ... makes you happy?

20 comments:

yeah this is bound to scare u. it scares everyone that ppl like that exist. But i think ill refrain XX's reply.

xx: atleast the extremists responsible for terrorist attacks all over india and mainly in J&K also suffered losses. We express our condolences (spelling ??) towards the innocent ppl who died inthe quake. They have left a void in many ppl's lives. They shall always be remembered.

hi, I seriously doubt if that should scare you to death or for that matter make me happy.

I am pretty confident that this XX (let's say it's a "he") or for that manner many in India of such kind - might be a great fans of SRK or Aamir or Sania - and when he refers to them, he never might actually look at their Muslim identity - he is at ease with Muslims (italics purposely added) of this kind.

There may be many people with deep contempt for a person or a community for a thought or ideologies and in reality their understanding about the person, or community or thought or ideology might turn out actually to be very poor to take such a stand of disharmony. This contempt is a result of nothing but ignorance/lack of proper understanding.

No matter how educated a person is, a man is always a prisoner of one's own prejudices. IMHO, there can be very rare cases of educated men and women. If I leave those aside, all the rest of the cases are either educating men and women or non-educating men and women. Those who belong to the former category are those who keep learning, if not today - tomorrow. The other category is those proud people who conclude that there is nothing else to be learnt though there is so much to learn. So, if we accept the above way of looking at things, then the way we shall react to such a reply from XX in a different tone.

Ignorance is not a cause for harm/destruction unless: a) manipulated towards destruction b) XX is very weak to fall into the trap of someone who's influence by a). Now, if you consider b) - this falls down to the basic convictions of a person. I am of the strong belief that even today, people are good. And hence, if at all they are ignorant, by engaging them in a proper fashion, they ignorance can be driven out.

Now there was one more question - "Why should only Muslims be targeted this way?" - In my opinion, the "only" part of the question is a misnomer. I can give you instances where there's a lot of contempt towards orthodox people or anything called orthodox. The way to react to these conversations, as far as I can think is not to react "What the fuck?" or "This is insane" or something else. That reaction might be spontaneous, but after brooding over the situation, it only betters our understanding of the world - and we move on educating ourselves and Inshallah, also help educate others.

I have not realized that this reply went beyond what would be a regular comment. My apologies.

CCI dont quite understand why it would make anyone happy? I used to think that education can wash away all ignorance but i was sadly mistaken. such prejudices are probably so deep rooted that it takes a lot more than education to drive it away.and in the ultimate analysis death is the great leveller. death claims you irrespective of status, religion and gender.its as insensitive as saying "oh goody, 50,000 people have died..the world is already an overpopulated place, we actually cleared some space"(someone i know actually said this)but the truth is that such attitudes do exist whether we like it or not..

i used to think that nobody cud ever be sick enough to think this way about ANY people, ANY body. i NEVER thought that people would try to harm u just cz u had different ideas about different things, no matter how much u differed on them.i dunno if i've ever been a target of such malice,but from the elders around me, the general talk that goes on, over the past 4-5 years, the feeling that 'people who're not one of us are out to get us' has slowly seeped down into my system and settled there.I too am starting to think that they might. i'm scared i'll fail my practicals if my professors are that kind - i think about this a lot - i just can't decide if it's for real, if it really happens, or it's just paranoia...

So, lets see what u said .. "think this way about ANY people,"well, lets see.. if that ANY refers to ppl who will kill someone for sure, then i will be happy if they die of natural calamity before they kill someone. So, when i say that its good that ppl responsible for terrorism died, i mean instead of the innocent ppl who will die off their bullets, these ppl died. you can say that God punished them for what they PLANNED to do. So i think its not justified to say "to think this way about ANY people"

playboi, u're off-track, u misunderstood my comment.try reading it again, u did not even GET what i sai;, just the opposite in fact.ANY refers to 'us', the common ppl. so u think, that ppl who COULD have died from bullets are better off dying a premature death from a natural disaster? u sound like they should be thankful for it!! skewed man, real skewed.

blister, i think i didnt write my pt properly .. wait .. ill put it again in a less complicated way :D

instead of innocent ppl dying off a terrorist's bullets, terrorists died because of a natural disaster.

this is ur prev comments 1st line "i used to think that nobody cud ever be sick enough to think this way about ANY people, ANY body"u stressed on ANY, so u can not blame me for misunderstanding it.

and, this time u said... "ANY refers to 'us', the common ppl." If thats the case, then i think u should blame ppl among ur own "us" because of which a great religion like Islam is getting a bad name. Its the same as when u see someone from bihar, u tend to think of him as a total "chutiya" (word approved by hindi movie's censor board).

# improve faith in kashmiri ppl for the indian army# destroy terrorist training camps and bunkers in pok# shake north-east pakistan's infrasturcture which will force it to stress more on development than terrorism.

i guess its a disaster for a common man but being an indian and anti-pakistan i am lil happy than what i would have been if the quake affected any other part than the pok.

no sweetheart, i do not possess blisters on my forehead..... i'm just a blisterin sister. and why the forehead specifically? and yeah, does being patriotic mean being inhuman? if ur roof fell over ur head in Pok and a paki tried to rescue you, would it be unpatriotic of him? God people!! being patriotic doesn't mean being a numb-brained zealot....

agastyabhrata, by makes 'you' happy, I was referring to the XXs of this world. Yeah, I agree with you, i'm just scared that such 'educated' people will run the country one day and God knows what that will lead to. Thank you for the comment :)

Dodo, I was referring to the XXs of this world.

DC, I know. I cannot understand whether the person who said something like that would not realize that those people had DIED. Its surprising that all that media coverage and the magnitude of the catastrophe is not enough to make people human.

Manu, you're missing a lot of points in your catch-22 situation. Its more of a vicious circle.

Sanyam, I'm rather ashamed that someone I know and respect would make a comment like that. Just putting yourself in their shoes for an instant would have, ( I hope) given you a different opinion. Too bad that not many people listened in the MOMM HSSM class, we're all the same inside, they're just as human as you are.

Burf, yeah .. and the sad part is .. that people are overlooking the most horrifying aspect and concentrating on the little things that eventually make no difference at all.

To avoid occurrences of such "educated" people to running the country - those who are not "educated" in that sense should come forward to lead the country - it need not just be in terms of political leadership - I would like to look at a leader as one who tries to improve the environment he/she lives in.